Tinkle, Tinkle Little Faux Pas

by admin on October 11, 2011

A few months ago, my husband and I were shopping at a small clothing store at our local mall. There were these two women who were shopping and they had a toddler with them (I would guess he was 1 1/2 to 2 years old). Now, I’m sure that this little boy was in the middle of being potty trained, and I understand that accidents happen when it comes to little kids, but this little boy decided that he had to go to the bathroom, so he preceded to pull down his pants and just pee all over the floor of the store. Instead of notifying management or trying to clean it up, the women who were with the child just grabbed a shirt off of a shelf, and threw it down over the puddle to hide the fact that this boy had just peed all over the floor, they then just continued shopping. Another customer had noticed this, and notified the employees, who had to go over and clean up the puddle. Being a clothing store, they didn’t have a lot of cleaning materials on hand, so once they finished cleaning up the puddle, they poured some perfume over the area to get rid of the smell.

I’m not sure why the management didn’t say anything to the women at this point, presumably since they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes, they didn’t feel comfortable confronting them, but a few minutes later, the women brought all of their purchases to the register. My husband and I were in line right behind them, and the women started yelling at the cashier and telling her that they needed a discount on their clothes because the perfume smell had made them sick. Seriously! Your kid just peed all over the floor, you destroyed merchandise trying to cover it up, and now you are asking for a discount. I was flabbergasted. At this point the manager stepped in and informed them that the reason the perfume was there was to cover up the smell of their kid’s pee, and she also informed them that they needed to pay for their stuff (at full price) and get out before she called the cops on them for destroying the shirt. The women were so offended that they just left, much to everyone’s relief. I still cannot believe the nerve of those women!! 1005-11

As someone with a history of retail experience, I can say that this doesn’t surprise me. I once found a paper cup full of urine on a shelf as I was cleaning. Yes…someone decided they couldn’t be bothered by finding a bathroom and just peed in a cup and left it for me to find. I’ve seen fitting rooms used as bathrooms. Used feminine products and dirty diapers just left for staff to take care of them. It definitely takes all kinds.

Two things strike me about this one. First, surely a little kid doesn’t make *that* much pee, so surely the parent could just have asked the shop staff for some paper towels, toilet paper or disposable cloth or something similar to mop it up herself. And then, of course, apologised profusely to the shop staff! The workers there should not have had to clean up some kid’s pee – that’s most definitely the job of the parent or guardian!

Secondly, accidents DO happen, but if the kid was old enough to recognise he needed to pee, and old enough to decide to pull his pants down, he was old enough to tell his mother he needed to go. He’d have got a good hard smack on the bottom to discipline him for his behaviour if he was my child!

Just horrid! This reminds me of a situation that happened in a F21 while I was living in Florida. I didnt see who did it, but it was nasty. The store wasnt that busy, and it was one of the chain’s larger branches. I walk over to the jewelry counter and I keep smelling this fowl smell. I didnt know where it came from, but I go to the next clothing rack over, and there was an adult sized “gift” just sitting there on the floor! I thought this was the most disgusting thing ever. I admit I didnt alert the staff because I was embarrased by just seeing it and didn’t know how to initiate such a conversation (this was about four years ago and I was still a young and silly teenager), but I looked over a few minutes later and saw one of the poor sales girls cleaning it up. The nerve!

Actually, you’d be surprised at how much urine a little bladder can hold! I have a 3-year-old boy who is in the throes of potty training. Unfortunately, he hates hates hates public restrooms (always has from the time he was a few months old – if I’d take him in to change his diaper he’d just scream and scream until we left.) When we’re out, I’ll ask him constantly if he needs to go but he’ll just hold it until we leave. As a result, we’ve left more than a few puddles in parking lots, but I try to get him somewhat out of the way so it won’t be stepped in. And better the parking lot than a store carpet, I figure.

I once worked at a fast-food restaurant where a woman changed her baby’s diaper on the table. During the process of changing (with no changing pad, mind you) the baby had squirmed all over the table and had left “evidence” everywhere. She just folded up the dirty diaper and left that on the table, too. Some people know no bounds when it comes to nastiness.

With regard to the OP’s story, I wish the manager had demanded they pay for the ruined shirt or called the police.

Recently my son got sick in the checkout lane at Target. You can bet that I cleaned it up as best I could with the checker’s paper towels while we waited for the person with the mop. Don’t have kids if you don’t want to clean up their messes!

Full disclosure: I don’t have children. I do have pets, though, and their needs are not dissimilar when it comes to elimination. They both have small bladders and fewer inhibitions about peeing on the floor if they feel the need.

The routine in our family was always “pee before you go”. Whenever we went somewhere when my brother and I were little, we were required to make a “pit stop” both before we left and when we arrived, even if we didn’t think we needed one, before we started whatever activity we had planned, because Mom and Dad knew that, once we got into play mode, we wouldn’t want to stop for the bathroom. I’m sure they avoided lots of soiled pants that way.

If I were out running errands with a little kid, I would be checking frequently to see if s/he needed a “rest”, and would insist that an attempt at least be made after a certain length of time. Yes, I know it takes more time, but isn’t it worth it?

I understand this perfectly. A fellow high school teacher could not understand why she was no longer invited to the homes of any of her friends. She said that it was “too much trouble” to potty train her son so she had decided to leave him in diapers. The lad did not like the feeling of a messy diaper, so he would remove his diaper, do whatever was necessary on the floor, and then pull his diaper back up.

She regaled us with this in the faculty room. She said she could not understand why so many people got upset by this-she always cleaned it up when she was in a friend’s home.

She was a Ph.D candidate, was an American, and was not of a minority group for those who would infer some correlation between a certain background and this behavior.

I hate to say it but this kind of thing doesn’t surprise me at all. I have worked in retail, at a gas station, and as a janitor at the YMCA. I am not even going to mention some of the foul things I have had to clean, caused by children and grown people alike. I’m not saying it’s right, it just happens more often than you think. The very least they could have done is actually told them. I would have made them pay for the shirt they ruined.

I was so disgusted and bewildered that such a thing can ever happen, and even more surprised when I read spartiechic’s comment. Some people are really unbelievable! Good that the put his foot down at the check out line. Some nerve that people have!

BTW, I was wondering that if their child wasn’t yet toilet trained, why was he out in public places without diapers?

To Green 123–considering the behavior of these women, it’s highly probable that the poor kid had been announcing his need to ‘go potty’ for so long that he just couldn’t wait any longer as they continued to ignore him.

When I was a kid, for my dad’s 40th birthday his sister and her family came to visit us and go to a local theme park. My youngest cousin was in the process of being potty trained (mostly by my grandma, as it turned out). While we were at the park, any time my cousin would have to go potty, my aunt and uncle would encourage him to pee behind trash cans instead of taking him to the restroom (and there were plenty of restrooms). They evidently found this behavior hilarious and even took pictures of the stream of pee flowing across the walkway as unsuspecting people walked through it.

Not only was that disgusting, but it set his potty training back quite a bit – my grandma told me she had to retrain him almost from scratch.

I just can’t believe there are people like this in the world. Here is an entire website full of people who find this behavior totally unacceptable and disgusting to say the least. Is there actually someone out there who would defend these women?

I agree with Green123 on the child’s actions – if he knew enough to know he needed to go and to pull down his pants before relieving himself then he was old enough to inform his mother that he had to use the bathroom. On what planet is it ok to pee in the middle of the store? I blame the child’s parent or guardian for this. From this story it doesn’t sound as if the kid received any kind of instruction.

As for the woman – throwing a shirt to cover the mess and complaining about the smell? I have no words. Like I said – I just have trouble believing there a people out there like that.

Completely disgusting and unfortunately, not surprising. *Grown* women not only letting a child use the floor as a commode but damaging merchandise in an effort to conceal it! Then DEMANDING a discount on their purchases because the perfume used to cover the smell made them sick?
Glad the manager eventually stood up to them, althought I would probably have asked them leave sooner, AFTER paying for the damaged shirt.

They poured perfume all over it? Ye Gods! Pee smell would be bad, but pee + perfume would be horrid beyond all imagining!

The fact that the little boy peed in the store isn’t the horrible part. He’s a toddler, he didn’t know any better, yada yada yada. Yeah, he should have said something to Mom about needing to go (and then Mom should have done the RUN RUN RUN to the bathroom that we’ve all seen from parents of potty training kids), but I’ll forgive him that one. There’s lots of reasons why it might not have occured to him. Maybe he was just too young to be potty trained. But the mom’s behavior is beyond the pale. So much so that I don’t wonder if it isn’t a scam. Bad enough that she didnt clean up the pee, but to then demand a discount and then be so “offended” that she didn’t purchase the items she picked out? That’s scam you are smelling, not perfume and pee.

I can believe a little kid creating a sufficient lake to be a major problem; my own two adorable precious ones have done so during their (painfully long) potty training process. They never dropped trou to do it, though; it was always a case of “Mom, I have to go potty . . . um . . . I’m having an accident!” They will hold it as long as humanly possible because most children who are difficult to potty train are not so much failing to understand as trying to delay the inconvenience of going to the bathroom. So their bladders will be full to bursting before they even say anything. But that’s why you come prepared when traveling to stores (or anywhere) with such a child, and, if possible, put them on a timer and regulate their fluid intake.

That said, the mother should absolutely have a) chastized the boy (any time your child screws up is a teachable moment, or should be), b) notified staff and apologized, and c) requested a roll of paper towels so she could clean it up herself (ideally with the child’s help — that can help a lot with part a, the teachable moment). Disgusting.

But those of you who have encountered adult “gifts” . . . wow. I can understand a two-year-old thinking that was the best possible action; two-year-olds don’t all figure out stuff at the same rate, which is why they have parents. But grownups have absolutely no excuse whatsoever. Yeesh.

@Green123…….little kids produce VAST quantities of urine!Hence the massive market in stay-dry nappies!The parent should have (at least offered to) clean up. maybe the little boy DID ask, and they were so busy shopping they ignored him? Maybe he has been spanked for wetting his pants, so pulled them down thinking he was doing the right thing? Maybe he is told to pee wherever he can. Spanking a child is most certainly NOT the way to toilet train them….I get the impression you don’t have children, actually….

This behaviour is disgraceful on the part of the adults who did nothing to help the small boy or set him a proper example.

I remember working retail management when this poor girl came out of the dressing rooms to report that someone had peed on the floor of the room. She had placed her personal clothes down on the floor to try on….to find that her clothes were soaked in pee. Really? We were not suprised anymore by the lack of consideration people have, or the lack of parenting shown. We really couldn’t guess if it was a child, or an adult. We gave her free clothes to wear out, since hers were disgusting.

What is wrong with people? Seriously, who thinks this is acceptable? Is it normal in their world for people to just walk in corners of their house or office, pee, then cover it up with a blanket or something?

I’m sorry, maybe it’s bad etiquette on my part, but I would have unleashed some public embarrassment very loudly on them: “Excuse me, Ma’am, you dropped something: Your son’s pee. Clean it up, because it’s nasty and a safety hazard.” Because you can bet if I slipped and fell and injured myself on the floor all because of her son’s urine, I’ll sue the lady, not the store.

Hey guys, this is the OP, love your comments, cannot believe some of the others stories that you have.

Note to AS: I got the feeling that these women were the type that would rather spend money on clothes for themselves rather than diapers for the kid, its possible that they just didn’t feel like spending the money on him.

Note to The Elf: The pee/perfume smell was pretty bad, but not so bad that I felt like I deserved a discount, also I never considered the scam angle before, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was

I work retail too and I can’t tell you how many times children have peed (and worse) on the floor in the kid’s section. The worst I ever had to deal with was when someone removed a bunch of books from a shelf (presumably an adult, as the shelf was at my eye level) then proceeded to vomit on the shelf, then replaced the books. This ruined almost a hundred dollars worth of books (there were a couple hardcovers and several paperbacks) and ensured that we didn’t see it until it began to smell. Bravo, ape-person.

Unfortunately, I’ve been on the city train (the stops are only 2-3 minutes apart) where a boy told his mom that he had to go to the bathroom. There are bathrooms at most of the stops, but the mom was too lazy to get off to take him so she told him to go pee in the corner of the train.

Sadly, I’ve worked retail, and stories like this aren’t made up to amuse you. Lord knows what I’ve found at night, along with my shift crew, cleaning up the store. You can tell, there’s usually a loud “EWWWWWW” from somewhere in the store, that tells you someone’s found something nasty. Of course, that’s at night, when you find the really good stuff people have hidden really well, not the stuff right out in the open that’s left out during the day. Thank God I only had to close one night a week.

We had one guy, obviously mentally ill, who would come running into the store. (He ran everywhere. His nickname in town was, obviously, “Running Man”.) He never stopped at the restroom, just droppem ’em as they came out. We obviously loved to see him come in.

I’m revolted but not surprised . We once had a client squat down & take a dump in the corner of our waiting room, at work. He didn’t bother to ask if we had a WC available (we did) and did this right in front of our reception staff, other clients, and anyone passing in the street.

Oh, and then was outraged when we told him he had to leave, and no we would not be rearranging the appointment to doing any further work for him

I just go through potty training my oldest daughter a couple months ago. I know the ‘Mommy, I have to pee’ thing that means ‘You have twenty seconds to find a potty, mommy.’ There were times where we made it to the bathroom, but in the process of pulling down the pants/pull-up/underwear we didn’t make it onto the potty. I always cleaned as best I could, including wiping down with disinfectant wipes I took to carrying around for just such a situation, then informed the employees so they could do a better cleaning job. If they would let me do it myself, I would.
What those woman did was completely repulsive, and it took a brass set to ask for a discount. I have a sensitivity to perfume, and I’ve NEVER considered asking for a discount due to the perfume smell in a store. It’s part of going out in public. Even if you’re not going somewhere you’d expect to find perfume you can bet that there will always be someone (and it’s not just women, men do it with cologne, and don’t start me on Axe) who has gone swimming in the stuff. If I can tell it’s going to be a bad day because I’m already reacting to something in the air or if I’m sick I don’t go out.
Kudos to the manager for refusing to give in to them, but they should have had to pay for the shirt.

My daughter (13) has incontinence issues, and will be unable to hold her bladder sometimes when entering a changing room. Because of this, she usually will try on clothing at home, rather than in a store. I have personally had 2 occasions where she made a mess on the floor – once in a Target at age 10, once in a Wet Seal store at the mall, when she was 11. Both times, I immediately went to the fitting room attendant and let them know there was an issue, and asked for cleaning supplies to take care of things.

Neither time resulted in damaging clothing belonging to the store, though at Target I had to buy my daughter new underwear to put on before exiting.

Of course my daughter was terribly embarrassed. The time in Target, it was on a carpet, so we had to soak it up with paper towels and then spray on the cleaning products. The saleslady was very helpful and reassured my daughter that it was okay, and that it happened all the time. She thanked us dozens of times for letting her know – now when I go into dressing rooms, I notice multiple stains on the carpet and cringe, wondering which ones were put there by people who DIDN’T tell the attendant and left the puddles for the next customer.

The Wet Seal incident was on a hard surface floor, and it was cleaned up and sanitized in no time flat.

No argument that the behavior of the women in charge of this child was despicable, and they certainly didn’t deserve a discount for the perfume/pee smell. However, I was a little surprised to read that the store had no cleaning supplies. Don’t they clean their store? Even if they contract cleaning services out, surely they have soap in their restroom for handwashing? A bit of hand soap and some paper towels aren’t ideal, but would work a lot better than some noxious perfume. But then, maybe creativity flew out the window, as they must have been flabbergasted by the absurdity of the situation.

I’ve had housekeepers in *college* residence halls tell me that they frequently had to clean showers where someone left a “deposit.” Where do these cretins come from? And, more importantly, where can we ship them back to?

Good lord. I recently dropped a gallon of milk in a grocery store and couldn’t stop apologizing. I can’t imagine just pretending it didn’t happen if my kid peed.

I’m with the commenter who said management should have had the women pay for the ruined shirt.

I used to work in a toy store, and on a couple of occasions a kid would get so absorbed in playing with our model train set that they would have an accident on our carpet. Not once did their parent apologize to us or call it to our attention; they’d just take their kids and haul it out of the store. Unbelievable.

That is absolutely horrendous. I work retail and the worst I had was when a customer threw up in a T-rex puppet and put it back in the basket with the rest, not saying anything to anyone. If another customer hadn’t tried out that same puppet later on, we probably wouldn’t have found it for a few days. I can’t forget the poor womans face when she handed it to me saying it was wet inside.

My husband and I have both worked retail and while I only encountered dirty diapers in dressing rooms, he encountered way worse than that. The worst thing he came across was when he was working at a major home improvement store and and adult decided the bathroom was too far and pooped on the floor in the middle of the aisle. My husband was the store cleaner and had to clean it up but he covered himself in protective gear and bleached everything.

With the best will in the world; whilst potty training, accidents can happen. Mercifully neither of mine actually had one in a public building, but it was a close run thing at times.

Any responsible parent will try to clean it up themselves, and then inform the staff at the place they are in what has happened. Or will at the very least inform staff so they can get the mop and bucket out.

A few years ago a co-worker of mine was complaining about her boyfriend. It seems that whenever they got home from an evening out, he would urinate in the bushes while she unlocked the front door. She complained that he did this when he was just seconds away from reaching the actual bathroom, then she asked me the eternal question “why do guys ALWAYS do that?”

A long time ago I worked in a very small childrens shoe store which only had a single toilet at the far end of the storeroom and was therefore unavailable to customers (allowing them back would break some health and safety laws). Most parents who asked to use the bathroom would accept this, but others would yell and scream, ignoring their child who was by that point desperate to go (we would direct them to the petrol station bathroom, two doors down, which was the nearest public bathroom available) and this often lead to accidents that the parents refused to clean up. Other times they’d purposely encourage their children to pee on shop merchandise and, on one memorable occasion, on the member of staff who’d explained about the bathroom situation. Sometimes they would take their children outside and get them to pee on the front window, on the outside display or against the door as ‘revenge’. We would also frequently find other ‘deposits’ hidden behind the pile of books and toys we kept in the corner to entertain the children, as well as used nappies shoved into shoe boxes- how they managed to do this in such a tiny store we could never figure out.

My favourite moment, though, was when a young girl announced she was going to be sick. I rushed to get her one of the plastic carrier bags to throw up in but her mother waved the bag away and instead reached for one of the (very expensive) boots the girl had been trying on. After the girl finished throwing up into the boot, the mother calmly handed it to me and said “I don’t think we’ll be taking these after all”. The room, which was very busy, went very quiet as I informed her that she had to pay for the damaged boots, to which she screeched that they were unwearable and that I was trying to steal from her. Eventually we got her to pay, but we had to threaten to call the police before she did so.

Sometimes I think it must be nice to live in the world these people seem to, where they can do whatever they want and not be expected to deal with the consequences, as if no one else is as important as they are.

Brings me back to my time in retail, and not in a good way. I can’t count the number of times we found urine and feces on the sales floor, and of course the stories of it happening in sister stores. And what makes it even worse is it was always clearly “adult”. I’m not sure what posses people, maybe its a sickness. Doesn’t really matter in the end, even if it is a sickness. People horrify me.

I was about to ask if the women were Chinese. I saw many, many kids that age pee on the ground in public places in China and it was acceptable there. But then there was the part about the shirt and the demanding a discount and I concluded they were just nuts. At least the manager had a spine and said something about it.

@Noodle – Chinese blood runs in my veins, and I have to say, I agree with you. My family has never encouraged public urination, and my parents and their parents were always very responsible in getting us to the bathroom on time or cleaning up the resulting mess. However, I live in an area with a high Asian population, and EVERY TIME that I see someone urinating in public, it’s a small Asian child with an older parent/grandparent looking on. Hello? Hygeine! I’m so complete and utterly disgusted by this – everyone who does it, not just the weirdos that live in my area. I’ve given up admitting the Chinese part, I now only admit to Australian. Thank goodness I don’t look Asian.

In college, I woke up at about 2AM to use the restroom. I had very bad eyesight at the time, and didn’t usually put my glasses on for a middle of the night pit stop. This is in addition to walking into a lit room after been asleep, so I just wasn’t seeing very well. I walked into a stall, sat down, and proceeded to do my business. After a few seconds, I realized my feet were wet, and I slowly forced myself to wake up, focus, and look down. My feet were immersed in a puddle of vomit! I was so disgusted, had to wash off my feet and attempt to get back to asleep!!

Good lord, I don’t know what’s worse; the original post, some of these comments, or the fact that one of the commenters on this very site thinks it’s “okay” to use a retail parking lot as her child’s personal latrine because “he doesn’t like public restrooms.”

If your kid doesn’t like public restrooms – WHILE he’s potty training – to the point that you allow him to urinate in parking lots, then you should be ashamed of yourself, and not take that child out in public. Or, here’s an idea, you could actually PARENT your child and explain to him that he may not LIKE them, but they’re a necessary evil because public urination is AGAINST THE LAW. My kid may not like going to bed at 8:00 PM, but since I’m the PARENT, I make him. It’s revolting that you would even ADMIT to such filth on a site like this.

@ Noodle,
My understanding is that in China it’s acceptable for small children to relieve themselves on the street, in parks and so forth, which is not the same thing as in the middle of a store. I can’t imagine that Chinese retail workers would take any better to that than their Western counterparts.

@Noodle – I think your comment about the women being Chinese cannot be taken well. Maybe in China, like it is the (unfortunate) case in several other countries, people do pee in public places, but it is usually a corner of a wall or something. But nowhere is it acceptable to pee in the middle of a departmental store. So, stop stereotyping people. Nut cases are universal.

My son is recently potty trained. He would never take down his pants to pee anywhere but on a toilet. The only time we’d end up with a puddle on the floor is if he wet his pants. I always take a bag with extra clothes for him, as well as wipes to clean up any accidents. Hasn’t happened yet, but I like to be prepared, because it’s my job to clean up his mess, not anyone else’s! And when we’re out, I always ask him frequently if he needs to go, to prevent any accidents from happening.

When I worked at Ritas, which is a little italian ice store, our one and only bathroom was inside the building… and it was an outside shop, meaning that in reality there was no services. Sometimes a parent would come up and ask for the bathroom in desperation for their child and we would agree… most were very ncie and thanked us… but oh how I used to shutter when it was a little boy…. because little boys usually miss and parents normally won´t wipe it up.

@AS , I lived in China for one year and have to disagree with you. I have seen parents letting their kids pee in supermarket (fruit aisle), pizza hut (right next to the table I was sitted), inside the cinema. But the worst was seeing a 9 years old looking girl taking a dump in a middle of busy mall.